Eight months have
passed since I succeeded
the Slavic Research Center (SRC) directorship
from my predecessor, Professor Tabata Shinichiro.
In other words, I have served one-third of my term
in this position. This is sufficient time to become
acquainted with the challenges and advantages
of the SRC and Slavic Eurasian studies in Japan.
First and foremost, the job market in Japan for
young Slavic Eurasian specialists is shrinking
dramatically. Competent young scholars with
quality publications, who would have reached the
position of tenure assistant professor ten years ago,
cannot find a job and en masse apply for temporal
assistant positions at the SRC and other universities.
The Japan Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology appreciates the
strategic importance of area studies, and the end
of the Cold War has not damaged Slavic Eurasian studies in Japan as
much, for example, as
in the United States (since Slavic Eurasian studies in Japan were much
less policy-oriented).
However, the declining birth rate more damaged higher education
institutes in Japan than in
other OECD countries. In 2004, state universities in Japan were
transformed into semi-public
agencies (khozraschet) and the government is pressing them to cut their
budgets and reduce
their number of staff each year. The end of the Cold War led to the
justifiable abolition of
courses such as the “socialist economy” and “socialist pedagogy.” In
addition, Russian as a
second foreign language is becoming less and less popular among
students. The generation
of 1948 (i.e., the generation who experienced the epoch of student
movement and preferred
to become university teachers, rather than go into business) makes up a
significant proportion
among the Slavic Eurasian specialists in Japan, and they will stay at
university posts for
several years more.

In my view, the most
important task for our academic community
in the coming years is
to assist young colleagues to survive until the expected improvement in
the job market, lest
they lose hope and switch job. Applying for competitive sources of
funding and implementing
university reforms boldly, we will try to introduce attractive
non-tenure posts with an
excellent research environment. Fortunately, the SRC’s performance and
the world Slavist
community’s constant encouragement enable us to enjoy an advantageous
position in the
quest for funding. In the SRC budget of 2006, fixed government funding
accounts for only
27 percent, we obtain the remainder through competition. The ongoing
five year program
financed by the Japan Ministry of Education, “Making a Discipline of
Slavic Eurasian Studies”
(2003-2008), received the preliminary assessment of A, – a fact that
makes the future
quest for funding easier.

Today, the SRC has only ten faculty members (tenure professors) with
about 30 research
staff of various categories and ten office staff. This structure, i.e.,
a relatively slim core surrounded
by a thick layer of academic and office staff is common, for example,
the Kennan
Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Davis Center of Harvard
University.

A general tendency in Slavic Eurasian studies in Japan during the last
ten years is the
peripheralization of academic interest. For example, Ukraine is
preferred to Russia, Moldavia
is preferred to Ukraine, and Transnistria is preferred to Moldavia...
There are several reasons
for this tendency. Young colleagues wish to be the first to excel in
new areas, hoping to
demonstrate their language skills, even if this is not necessarily to
their advantage when
seeking a job. Russian studies require only two languages, Russian and
English, and this
fact discourages young colleagues.

The second reason is more substantial. The Soviet Union was worthy of
study in any
case, because of its status as a superpower. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, young
colleagues began to find the study of the Slavic Eurasian territory
attractive mainly because
of its ethnoconfessional diversity. In terms of academic
attractiveness, therefore, the ethnoconfessional
diversity of the region has served as a substitute for the superpower
status of the
Soviet Union. In this context, the peripheries of Slavic Eurasia appear
more interesting than
Russia, and in Russia, the Volga-Ural region and North Caucasus appear
more stimulating
than ethnic Russian regions. This peripherization of academic interest
has pluses and minuses
and this tendency seems, to a significant extent, irreversible.
Nevertheless, it might be time
to focus on Russia again, and with the benefit of our knowledge of
Slavic Eurasia, we will
be able to understand Russia from fresh perspectives.

In addition, it is important to focus on the border regions between
Slavic Eurasia and
the neighboring countries. The interaction between the Slavic Eurasian
peripheries and the
neighboring countries is generating a huge belt of new, still
unidentified regions around
Slavic Eurasia. For example, the Shanghai Organization is neither a
Slavic Eurasian nor an
Asian association. The Baltic countries might have ceased to be Slavic
Eurasia, but they
have barely become Nordic countries either. Formerly, it was possible
to study the South
Caucasus with knowledge of Russian and local languages. Now, knowledge
of Persian and
Turkish are also required in order to study this region. The same can
be said for the Baltic
countries. In addition to Polish or German, which were traditionally
necessary to study this
region, it seems desirable to know at least one of the Nordic
languages. We need not only
new languages, but also new disciplines. For example, a good knowledge
of Oriental studies
will become essential for future Slavic Eurasian studies. It is
necessary to create a system to
teach young scholars new languages, disciplines, and analytical
devices. Moreover, we need
to establish close cooperation with the research institutes operating
in the new border regions:
Shanghai, Teheran, Ankara, somewhere in Greece or the Balkans, and
Helsinki. I hope to
accept graduate students from these new border areas, and send our
young scholars there.

Thus, scholarly attention should be addressed to both Russia as a core
of Slavic Eurasia
and the border regions between Slavic Eurasia and the outer world. In
this way, we will
reconstruct Slavic Eurasia not as a primordial area, but as something
like a magnetic field in
which various gravities interact. Perhaps this is the task to which the
SRC will be devoted
in the coming years.